Los Angeles County – and the City of Alhambra – are taking their first steps along the county’s “roadmap to recovery” with most of the steps being in the right direction.

This weekend saw county hiking trails with manageable crowds who were generally following the Health Officer Order directives, including maintaining social distance, wearing face coverings and not lingering in spaces that could become crowded.

At the county’s midday briefing Board of Supervisors Chair Kathryn Barger said officials were very happy with how residents are conducting themselves.

The Department of Public Health’s health inspectors were out this weekend too, surveying the non-essential businesses that began opening on Friday for the first time in almost two months – but only if they could practice safe social distancing.

Public Health found that of the 410 businesses surveyed this weekend, 162 of them were in violation, allowing customers into stores, not following physical distancing measures and not requiring face coverings.

The health directives are required by law; the few businesses that could not comply after being told of their violation were shut down by inspectors, according to LACDPH Director Barbara Ferrer.

Just because it’s allowed, businesses do not have to open, and should not open until they can follow all public health requirements, Ferrer said. Those requirements and business FAQs can be found on the Public Health’s site.

The City of Alhambra began drawing names from the COVID-19 financial relief lottery during a live stream on Monday – which can now be viewed on the city’s Facebook page. The process ran for more than an hour.

In the city hall conference room, Mayor Ross J. Maza took tickets out of a rolling drum to select 200 households from the 1,980 applications the city received for the financial aid. An extra 50 entries were selected in case any of the first 200 households did not meet the eligibility criteria, which need to be verified and could take more than a week for the review.

The families who receive the funding will get $1,500 in three installments – $500 per month – from June through August to help with rent or mortgage payments.

The funds are from the Community Development Block Grant-CV the city received and it designated about $300,000 of the nearly $600,000 total towards this financial relief.

The other half of  the block grant went towards a city COVID-19 testing site, which opened last week. City Manager Jessica Binnquist told the Alhambra City Council meeting Monday afternoon that 343 residents of the city were tested last week but just seven of them had positive test results.

For residents to be tested in the City of Alhambra they have to be symptomatic or low-income – go here for information – and testing is scheduled to run through May 29. L.A. County’s testing requirements are less strict.

To date, the county has test results for 210,000 residents, of which 32,258 have been positive.

Over the last 24 hours, 591 new cases have been identified, though Ferrer reminded that Monday’s numbers are usually low due to some labs being closed on the weekends.

There were also 39 new deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths in the county to 1,569.

At the time of publication, the COVID-19 surveillance dashboard had not updated Monday’s figures and showed six deaths in Alhambra.

Of the 1,569 people, 92% of the people had underlying health conditions, and 50% of all the deaths – 779 individuals – were residents of congregate living settings, mostly skilled nursing facilities.

For all of the county’s investigations of institutional settings, go to their locations page. For more detailed statistics and data, go to their COVID-19 Surveillance Dashboard.

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Want to help?

• California is looking for healthy volunteers to safely help their local communities. Go to the Californians for All site to get info on volunteering in the community or from home.
• California is looking for donations of medical resources to respond to COVID-19. Go to the site to see what kind of equipment is needed.
• L.A. County is looking to lease hotel and motels for COVID-19 testing, quarantine, isolation and medical shelters. Contact the Office of Emergency Operations Center. See today’s situation.
• Looking for other ways? National and Community Service, the home of AmeriCorps and Senior Corps, have ideas.

Need help?

• Call 2-1-1 for:
  • Homeless services and medical shelters
  • Drive-through COVID-19 testing appointments
  • Any other referrals to county services
• Meals:
  • Critical Delivery Service or 888-863-7411
  • Workforce Development, Aging and Community Services page or 800-510-2020
  • County COVID-19 food resource dashboard
• Economic Impact Payment (stimulus check):
  • Non-filer payment information
• Department of Mental Health or 24-hour help line 800-854-7771
• Domestic Violence
  • Domestic Violence Council or 800-978-3000
  • Violence Against Women Act: Certain non-citizens in abusive situations can apply for permanent residency
  • Hotline: 800-978-3600
• Employment:
  • OnwardCA is working to place people into open positions.
• Info from the county on a face covering, video directions on how to make one.

Los Angeles County Department of Public Health page.

For all of the reporting from the Alhambra Source, go to our Stay Healthy page.

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Jon Thurber contributed to reporting